Rick Hasen's blog

Search Results for: thalheimer

Teddy Schleifer for the Houston Chronicle: A federal judge issued a temporary injunction Friday, knocking out Houston’s fundraising blackout rule which prevents city candidates from raising money before Feb. 1 of an election year. You can find the 42-page ruling issuing a preliminary injunction at this link. It distinguishes the Thalheimer case, in which the court upheld a time limit under the City of San Diego’s laws. (I was one of…

Via SCOTUSBlog comes the news that the Supreme Court, without comment, has denied cert. in Danielczyk v. U.S.,The decision not to hear the case is significant, because it means the Supreme Court majority, which has shown hostility to campaign finance limits, has decided not to move as aggressively as it could in further deregulating the campaign finance system. The case raised the question (in the context of a criminal prosecution) whether corpo…

Missoulian: “The Montana Republican Party donated $500,000 to gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill and approximately $30,000 to attorney general candidate Tim Fox after a judge struck down the state’s campaign contribution limits.” More here. We saw a similar move in the Thalheimer case when San Diego’s limits were temporarily blocked….

Following up on this post, the Ninth Circuit motions panel, in an opinion by Judge Bybee, unanimously stayed the district court order which would have had the effect of removing most of the contribution limits in the state of Montana judge weeks before the election. As I had suggested, heavy on the 9th Circuit judges’ concerns were what it would mean to lift these limits just before the election and the fact that the judge threw out a lar…

The Eighth Circuit has issued its en banc opinion in the Swanson case. The Eighth Circuit now joins the Second, Fourth (after the rejection of the district court decision in Danielczyk) and Ninth Circuits (in the Thalheimer case in which I was involved) in holding that any challenge to corporate contribution bans in the lower courts is barred by the Supreme Court’s decision in FEC v. Beaumont. The 8th Circuit does drop a footnote however…

Another interesting campaign finance case filed by the Right to Life Committees, and another interesting campaign finance case out of Vermont. The decision on summary judgment denied the plaintiffs’ challenges to the application of Vermont’s law. Along the way, the court offers an intriguing discussion on “major purpose” as a limit on regulating PACs, at odds with the Fourth and Tenth Circuits. And an intriguing decisi…

The time to appeal has passed in the litigation over challenges to a number of City of San Diego campaign finance laws. [Disclosure: I am one of the lawyers for the City of San Diego.] The case went to the Ninth Circuit at the preliminary injunction stage but there was no appeal after the district court decided the cross-motions for summary judgment. Among other things, the Ninth Circuit held at the preliminary injunction stage that a ban on no…

Jason Campbell has published this student note in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Here is the abstract: Since the early twentieth century, the Tillman Act has barred corporations from contributing directly to candidates for federal office. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a related ban that prevented corporations from making independent expenditures in candidate elections. The legal foundation of the independen…

That’s Allen Dickerson’s claim. Oh please. The Montana Supreme Court took Justice Kennedy at his word and looked at the state’s evidence of corruption to justify its law. That might be wrong—but it is not defying the rule of law. Want to talk about defying the rule of law? Look at the district court decision in the Danielczyk case (now on appeal to the 4th Circuit), defying Supreme Court precedent on the constitutiona…

Agreeing with the Second Circuit and Eighth Circuit (now up on en banc appeal) and disagreeing with the district court in the Danielczyk case (now on appeal to the 4th Circuit), a federal district court in San Diego today had upheld the City of San Diego’s laws banning corporations, labor unions, and other non-individual entities (aside from political parties) from contributing money directly to candidates for City office. The opinion in T…

Viveca Novak has written this must-read profile of Jim Bopp for the American Prospect. Viveca, a former Time correspondent who I got to know during Florida 2000, has recently taken up the position as Editorial and Communications Director for the Center for Responsive Politics. I’ll be going up against Citizen Bopp in federal district court in San Diego Friday in the Thalheimer challenge to the City of San Diego’s campaign finance la…

Barring breaking legal developments (and we’ve seen an inordinate share of those in the last two weeks), posting will resume after New Year’s Day (and will be light the first week of January as I speak at AALS on Internet voting and at a panel on law blogging and argue for the City of San Diego on cross-motions for summary judgment in the Thalheimer campaign finance case). The year ahead will be a busy one for election law, and espec…

The opinion is here [updated link]. See also this Thomson Reuters report. Among other things, the opinion (1) confirms that lower level scrutiny applies to laws regulating contributions even after Citizens United (“Since the Supreme Court preserved the distinction between expenditures and contributions, there is no basis for Appellants’ attempt to broaden Citizens United. Appellants’ selective and misleading quotes carefully skip over th…

Dick Semerdjian and I (representing the City of San Diego in the Thalheimer litigation) have written this letter to the editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The case is currently subject to cross-motions for summary judgment in federal district court….

Good news in Preston v. Leake from the 4th Circuit, in a case which puts it at odds with the Second Circuit’s Green Party case. (I discuss the Green Party case and the district court’s decision in Preston in my forthcoming lobbying paper in the Stanford Law Review.) Assuming this decision stands (that is, is not taken en banc or heard by the Supreme Court now given the Circuit split), it would provide a strong basis for upholding th…

Read the complaint here. (Some aspects are similar to the suit filed in the Thalheimer case, in which Bopp is on one side and I am one of the lawyers representing the City of San Diego on the other.) More in this story….

The following press release arrived from the James Madison Center via email. Coalition Files Lawsuit Challenging Montana’s Campaign Finance Law Montana residents Doug Lair and Steve Dogiakos, and American Tradition Partnership PAC want to give a couple hundred dollars in contributions to candidates that they like for the Montana State House. Montana, however, limits their contributions to just $160, which is among the lowest limits in the co…

In Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, the Ninth Circuit upheld the trial court’s denial of a preliminary injunction of the City’s law barring non-human contributions to candidates (the same issue as in the Danielczyk case in the 4th Circuit and the Swanson case in the 8th circuit). The court also denied a preliminary injunction as to time limitations for candidates raising campaign contributions. The Ninth Circuit also denied reheari…

Big news from the Ninth Circuit. The full court has denied rehearing en banc in this campaign finance case. According to the order, no active judge on the court requested a vote in the case. Among other things, the panel opinion held that a ban on non-human (e.g, corporate or union) direct contributions to candidates does not violate the First Amendment. The court also held that a temporal limitation on campaign contributions (no contributio…

You can read it here. You can find my earlier coverage of this case here. [Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for the City of San Diego.] Under the rules, no response to the petition may be filed unless the court asks for a response….

That’s the lead press release at the moment at the James Madison Center. Note that this is a suit against the county of San Diego. Jim Bopp and I are on opposite sides of a lawsuit raising similar issues involving the city of San Diego. That case, the Thalheimer case, is currently pending before the Ninth Circuit….

I earlier posted about the Supreme Court’s denial of a stay in the Family PAC case. Now the Ninth Circuit has issued this 74-page opinion upholding provisions of Washington State’s disclosure law against First Amendment challenge. The case was not posted at the usual time of day for 9th Circuit postings, and it is is in typescript form. That’s usually done for opinions issued on an expedited basis. I don’t know if the…

The opinion in MCCL v. Swanson is here. Plaintiffs, represented by Jim Bopp, have already appealed. I will be arguing against Jim on a similar issue before the Ninth Circuit in the Thalheimer case on October 4….

Michigan has apparently entered into a consent decree permitting corporate contributions to independent expenditure committees, converting this preliminary injunction into a permanent one. This comes on the heels of Thalheimer v. City of San Diego and the FEC’s Commonsense 10 Advisory Opinion, confronting the same issue at the city and federal level, respectively….

The San Diego campaign finance case, Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, will be heard by the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena on October 4. I plan to argue on behalf of the City of San Diego. One of the questions posed in the case is the constitutionality of San Diego law barring corporations, unions, and other non-human entities from contributing directly to candidates for City office. Also at issue is whether political parties have a constitutional r…

Following up on this post, I have posted at this link the Plaintiffs’ first brief in the San Diego Thalheimer case. (Jim Bopp is the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs). Among other arguments, the plaintiffs argue that corporations and other non-individual entities have a constitutional right to make campaign contributions directly to candidates. [Disclosure: I am co-counsel for the City of San Diego in this matter.]…

Today co-counsel and I filed this brief in the 9th Circuit, arguing against a district court order (1) preliminarily enjoining the City’s law barring individual (>$500) and non-individual (i.e., corporate, union, etc.) contributions to independent expenditure committees and (2) preliminarily enjoining, as to political parties, a ban on organizational direct contributions to candidates. Plaintiffs have cross-appealed, so there will be add…

Jim Bopp has been the attorney in the RNC v. FEC litigation. But NBC now reports that “if the RNC loses [before the three judge court], it will ask Olson to represent them in a Supreme Court challenge.” Jim is not a friend of mine; indeed we are on the opposite sides of the San Diego/Thalheimer case right now. But here what I wrote when Bopp was replaced by Olson in the Citizens United case: “The Citizens United case was Bopp…

I’ve been reporting on the preliminary injunction decision (and clarification of decision) in the Thalheimer v. City of San Diego campaign finance case. (I am co-counsel for the City in this case.) As I noted, the Court issued a split decision on Plaintiffs’ challenges. The City has now appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from parts of the adverse portions of these orders. In particular, the City i…